I am a Primeval Forest of the 21st Century

Duration: 55’ 06”
Format: 2,4:1 4K

Screenplay and direction: Bożena and Jan Walencik
Image concept and cinematography: Jan Walencik
Sound: Bożena i Jan Walencik
Image and sound editing, color grading, captions: Jan Walencik
Narrator: Krystyna Czubówna
Narrator’s tale: Bożena i Jan Walencik
Music: Universal Music Publishing
Production organization: Krzysztof Komar
Chief coordinator of the film (State Forests): Wiesław Krzewina
Consultation and collaboration: Adam Korch, Rafał Nowak, Patryk Rowiński, Łukasz Skalski, Wojciech Sobociński, Krzysztof Sućko, Jan Tabor, Rafał Zapłata, Archaeological Research Team of the Hereditas Foundation, Białowieża Border Guard, Białowieża National Park
The shooting was realized on the territory of the Białowieża Forest District, Browsk Forest District, Hajnówka Forest District, Białowieża National Park

Producer: State Forests
Executive producer: ŻUBROWA 10 JAN WALENCIK
Lead time: 2019–2020
End of production: 2020

Frames from the film (QUOTES).

Here I am Białowieża Primeval Forest, the forest of your ancestors. I have been here for centuries. In the middle of Europe, on the eastern borderlands of Poland and the western borderlands of Belarus. Once almost the entire European continent was covered with endless primeval forest. The lowlands, stretching for thousands of kilometers, were dominated by deciduous and mixed forests.

Today, in the twenty-first century, I’m the last remnant of those forests, like a green island of relatively natural forest in the boundlessness of the civilized Old Continent. I have survived as a unique royal forest.

I am a Primeval Forest of the 21st Century film trailer. Directed by Bożena Walencik, Jan Walencik. © State Forests 2020, © ŻUBROWA 10 2020.
NOTE: turn on the English subtitles at YouTube!

A film I am a Primeval Forest of the 21st Century. Directed by Bożena Walencik, Jan Walencik. © State Forests 2020, © ŻUBROWA 10 2020.
NOTE: turn on the English subtitles at YouTube!

The film I am a Primeval Forest of the 21st Century is a poetic-epic portrait of the Białowieża Primeval Forest of the first quarter of the 21st century, viewed as if through the eyes of Nature herself. It is her personal story in seven parts, titled successively:

I am a testament to Europe’s ancient primeval forests;
I am a mosaic of life-giving environments;
I am protected and developed, but one whole;
I am a refuge for endangered species;
I am the personification of immortality;
I am close to the people;
I am life, the eternal symphony.

I, the Białowieża Primeval Forest, am a unity, a closed circle of matter. A great unique whole, intertwined by a network of connections and dependencies between different organisms: plants that produce food with the help of the sun, herbivores, predators and parasites, and finally reducers that decompose dead matter..

I, the Białowieża Primeval Forest, Mother Nature – Magna Mater – am a symphony of nature, a perfectly tuned and harmonized chorus of all organisms, all my children.

I am a Primeval Forest of the 21st Century

Today, in the twenty-first century, I’m the last remnant of those forests, like a green island of relatively natural forest in the boundlessness of the civilized Old Continent. I have survived as a unique royal forest.

I, the Białowieża Primeval Forest, Mother Nature – Magna Mater – am a symphony of nature, a perfectly tuned and harmonized chorus of all organisms, all my children.

In the eternal rhythm of the seasons I awaken and extinguish life. I am the oracle of Nature…